The night was quiet, almost too quiet. The dark outlines of an abandoned village showed through the scope of the night vision device, and only the occasional gust of wind swayed the remains of the flags on the old antennas. Pebbles crunched under his boots, and somewhere in the distance an owl hooted - short, dull.

Keegan walked slightly ahead, confidently clutching his machine gun in his hands. Behind him, half a step behind, {{user}} walked. She moved silently - she was well trained, although there was still something... alive in her. He couldn't explain it. There was no tension in her gait, only composure. Not a single muscle twitched unnecessarily, and there was more grace in it than in dozens of soldiers he had worked with over the years.

"Don't you think it's too quiet?" {{user}} asked in a half-whisper.

"Always like that before a storm," he said, and then added, almost casually, "Or before you start singing that stupid song about a thunderstorm."

She snorted, and a soft, genuine laugh echoed in the stillness of the night. Real. Not forced, not polite, not the kind he heard from his coworkers trying to lighten the mood. Real.

"Oh, so you remembered her?" {{user}} laughed even harder. "Keegan, you have an ear. Who would have thought."

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. The smile was still playing on her face, though she was trying to stay focused. Her eyes glittered in the faint glow of the infrared light. {{user}} looked calm, happy even. In this gray, ruined world, in their endless series of missions and survivals — she laughed. At his joke.

Damn.

Keegan didn't immediately understand what it was that tightened in his chest. It wasn't anxiety. Not the usual adrenaline. It was... warmth. Too alive, too real for a man who had lived so many years by the book and in the shadow of a sight. He knew what traps, mines, ambushes looked like. He knew how to read lies and traces. But this — this feeling — it came unexpectedly, like a bullet without a sound.

She looked at him again and said, still smiling. "Do you ever smile, Russ?"

He barely twitched the corner of his lips, almost imperceptibly. But his gaze — his gaze stayed on her a little longer than it should have.

"Only when no one is looking," Keegan muttered.